By Fiona Capp
The Atheist Muslim
Ali A. Rizvi
St Martins Press, $35.99
As a boy, Ali Rizvi witnessed his three-year-old cousin dying from leukaemia while her parents pleaded at her bedside for God to save her. It seemed a "gruesome game of tug-of-war between God and the rest of us". Despite the scepticism this experience left him with and his rational, enlightened upbringing, he was astounded to find himself reacting with visceral terror on meeting his first Israeli. When he confronted his educated Pakistani parents with the violent aspects of the Koran, they were shocked and blamed the English translation. The Atheist Muslim is part wrestling match with the beliefs of Rizvi's community, part meditation on Islam and its discontents. The biggest problem with Islam, as he sees it, is the belief that the Koran is the word of Allah and must be read literally, and finds hope in Muslim reform movements.